Reviews by End Master

So I’ve been starting to look for IFs in this very database that might be of interest to me and to my surprise when I was doing my review of Lurking Horror, I found out there was a sequel. Granted not an official one, but a sequel nevertheless. I made a note to check it out later.

I sort of went in a little skeptical based on the reviews since having played the original, this one just didn’t sound like anything like it.

And it isn’t, but that turned out to be just fine. Probably the best comparison is how the original Evil Dead movie was played a lot more serious than the second movie, but the second movie was good in its own way. A humor approach probably was the best way to go with a sequel even though humor can be a bit of a roll of the dice on appealing, but it rolled a natural 20 for me.

The “Groundhog Day” death gimmick was also incorporated well, though the time limit is a bit too tight at times since there’s a few places where you have to make every move count before instadeath and you have to start all over again (Don’t bother picking up those books/notes/papers just read and wait to die)

I still like the original better, but this was fun to play through and a whole lot quicker to restart when I died. The game has an amusing subtitle too.

This is one of those games that starts straddling the fence of graphic IF, however if something like Tass Times in Tonetown is on here, then this one still qualifies.

I bought this one for the Amiga 500 and saw Elvira on the cover. Now at the time I already had the Elvira Mistress of the Dark adventure game, so I actually thought this would be similar, but unlike that one, the gameplay was severely different. (And Elvira had very little to do with the game, she was just on the cover as eye candy as usual) Also learned that this one actually came out before the first “official” Elvira game, so it could potentially be considered a predecessor to the company’s more well known horror based games.

Gameplay is a mix of text based commands and clickable objects and verbs. However, if you wanted to you could play the entire game using nothing but text based commands. In fact in some cases typing in commands is necessary for the sake of precision, but most of the time you’re probably using both.

You do not control a character on the screen, you see everything in a first person view and when you move to a new location, the screen changes to that particular location (No moving camera) There are several NPCs to interact with and they will go about their business and be in different locations at different times. You’ll even see them walking around on screen when they’re moving to different locations so it’s a living world with a day and night cycle.

Okay so now let’s get on with the storyline. You’ve returned to the small English town that you grew up in to figure out what’s happened to your father who was the pastor of the church. The opening scene of the game pretty much gives that mystery away, so it isn’t really a spoiler, but the Devil has killed your father, replaced him and is trying to take over the town. It isn’t really spelled out, but you’ve got a time limit of four days to stop the evil from taking over completely.

First off let me say that the game has a creepy mood to it all throughout. Even when it’s broad daylight and there are people around, there’s always an underlining sense of danger. Especially since some of the villagers are already under the influence of the Devil or are outright monsters. There aren’t too many locations to go to, but most locations are detailed so you’ll probably be searching every drawer, cabinet and the like you can.

There are a lot of items you can take (and a lot you can even carry at the same time) but most aren’t going to be useful. In fact you somewhat have to be careful with just taking things too. In some cases, people won’t let you in the first place while they’re present. And in the major case, the local constable WILL arrest you for having stolen items on your person or even in your room at the Inn where you stay. He doesn’t know immediately, but linger about a day or so with stolen items and he’ll suddenly arrest you if you have them which will lead to a premature ending of you going to jail. (One of the kinder endings) Also keep in mind, that breaking and entering into people’s homes to snoop around is another great way to getting arrested if they happen to be home. You can’t just go around being a normal “adventurer” going everywhere you please taking things!

You’ll definitely be saving and replaying portions of the game a bit, because besides the overall time limit, there are missable events as well. One major event occurs right near the beginning of the game and if you don’t investigate immediately, you’ll miss out and you won’t be able to complete the game. Certain areas are dangerous at certain times unless you have the right item too.

Which brings me to the wonderful death scenes, if you mess up, you’ll be treated to a cool close up of your dead face with various wounds of how you died. (Bite marks, burns, etc). Apparently there was a first run version of this game which had death face of you after being garroted with your eyes bugged out and your tongue hanging out, but this got axed in later versions of the game for being too gruesome. Sort of amusing considering Horror Soft’s later Elvira games had way more gory death scenes than anything in this game. (Hell, Jack the Ripper had a gory picture of a naked woman in it and that came out two years earlier)

The game is of course firmly in the horror genre, but there is more than a bit of mystery going on as well since you have to uncover which townspeople are evil and either report them to the constable with evidence so he can take care of them, or deal with them yourself. Walking around the town at night can be pretty dangerous, so it’s odd that the constable is safe from these same dangers. Oversight on the developers part or is he in on the satanic conspiracy?

Well you’ll have to play the game and find out. As far as I know it’s available on GoG.

I enjoyed this game a lot and would come back to it again and again. Highly recommended for anyone that likes horror IFs.

So here we are at the end of the trilogy and honestly I’m glad to be done with writing the reviews of these Zork games as I was when I was playing them.

Pretty sure this one I got out of a sake of completeness (Much like I’m doing this review!) and I hadn’t even beaten the second one at the time when I got it. But hey, the 80s had just ended, C64 games were becoming a little harder to find and the games you could find in stores were a lot cheaper so why not right?

Now if the second game has been said to be the more humorous one of the trio, the third one is generally considered to be the serious business one of the three. I’d definitely agree with that assessment. It also feels like it has more of a storyline as well since it isn’t just a simple treasure hunt.

As with the last two installments there’s a timer which will make the game impossible if you don’t do something within that limit. In this case a fairly severe one that definitely increases the difficulty since you won’t necessarily realize it. Though this isn’t really new in Infocom games in general. Just chalk it up to the game insisting on messing with you. There’s a maze-puzzle which is probably the worst of the torment, but considering this is the last of the trilogy, it makes sense that everything should be a lot harder.

I can’t really add too much more other than it’s a solid ending to the trilogy and there’s nothing really wrong with it. The writing is even better in conveying the tone of this one, indeed it probably helped keep my interest longer than if it had been more like the last two games. However, it’s just a case that by that point I lost complete interest in Zork!

I wonder if the writing had been like this from the start of the first game, I would have cared more about the series as a whole. Oh well, no use in looking too much into it, since I’m already set in my ways.

Of course as always though, if you’re into these older style IFs and enjoyed the Zork setting up to this point then you’d want to give this one a try.

A few years after beating Zork 1, I got Zork 2 figuring I liked the first one well enough to beat it, the second one would probably entertain as well. I suppose it did to some degree, but it really didn’t hold my attention like the first one did for some reason.

It’s been suggested that Zork 2 was the more humorous one of the original trilogy, which I’d agree with since I do remember more amusing bits in it. Even a simple description of the dragon being annoyed by your attempt to kill him were worth a chuckle. Might not have been Hitchhiker’s, but there was definitely more personality in this one compared to the first.

One major bit of the game which kept me engaged was the wizard who continues to pop up to troll you. Sometimes resulting in your death if he cast certain spells that really hampered you in a particular location. One example I can think of that happened to me was him causing me to float in the topiary which resulted in the hedge monsters there eventually kill me. It worked in your favor on a rare occasion though as sometimes the wizard’s spells would fail and nothing would happen.

The wizard and his actions would probably considered grossly unfair and random nowadays (Actually it was back then too) but it provided more entertainment for me. Another plus was the lack of a huge pointless maze though a few of the more frustrating puzzles probably made up for that.

It’s still a solid game in most ways, but I think this was the one where I started to realize that I wasn’t really into the whole Zork setting.

I’ve never really been heavily into the Zork series. The lore of it has never particularly captivated me either, but I always enjoyed the concept of the grue. A lot has already been said about Zork so there’s little more I can add, but I’ll add my opinion anyway because that’s what this place is for.

Honestly, there’s no reason why I should even like the first game as much as I did (and still do to some extent). It’s a bare bones treasure hunt with no real direction on what to do, a semi-hidden timer involving the lamp, lots of chances of getting into a walking dead scenario and worst of all there’s a maze.

Still, something about it kept me coming back. I could chalk this up to a simple “It was the old days and you just played the games you had no matter what.” or the fact that I couldn’t get very far in Hitchhiker’s at the time, but there was a genuine sense of wonder with the exploration given the different locations you could go to.

While I’m sure some of this is nostalgia, but at the time when I played, it really did feel like playing a dungeon crawler in text form with an emphasis on puzzles. I might have liked it even more if there had been a few more foes to kill other than the troll and the thief. (Not sure if you could ever kill the cyclops, I always got past him by saying the name he feared) The underground complex always felt a bit empty compared to more traditional dungeons, then again most Infocom games were always a bit spartan when it came to NPC interactions.

Other than the god awful maze, I never felt too frustrated by it despite some of the more convoluted puzzles. I think that’s due though to feeling like I had a lot of freedom to move about and explore. So I never felt like I was confined at least.

I would have to agree with a few of the other reviews already here that the Zork “style” of IF isn’t so much outdated as it was pretty common for its day so naturally people eventually got sick of it. Same with most things that are overdone. Today there are a lot more folks doing IFs so there is more variety of finding what you might be into.

So for those that might not have played this game and are interested in the “old style” of what IFs used to go for, you can’t really go wrong with the first Zork game.

Ever have a great idea only to find out it’s been done already? Well that’s Seedship for me.

I once had a concept to do a CYOA very similar to Seedship, but ended up putting it on the back burner to work on other projects. Honestly not sure if I ever would have gotten around to it given my backlog of story ideas, but when I randomly discovered Seedship one day and played through it multiple times I was like “Well I guess I can focus on other projects.”

Yet at the same time my idea of the story of an AI controlling a space ark would have been very different (Specifically very story driven as far as choice and not stat based), and it isn’t like it’s a brand new concept entirely. (Indeed I got my idea originally from various movies I’ve watched) So who knows I may return to the concept of a Space Ark CYOA one day.

For now though, we have Seedship. And I really enjoyed this game.

The different random events and planets give it a lot of replay value. While this one is definitely a bit more on the technical side with the stats taking center stage, for me there is enough ongoing “story” there to keep me more engaged. (Unlike say Suspended). Plus I also like to see outcomes of less than optimal runs. Seeing the remains of the human race colonize a new planet only to blow it all up and exist in a post apocalyptic hell world is always amusing.

Probably the only disappointment I have is you lose points if you encounter another alien race and you end up genociding or enslaving them. Why? As the AI your main goal was to ensure the survival of the human race, xeno lives don’t matter. I’m guessing the game though was encouraging more of a Star Trek society rather than a Warhammer 40K one.

Despite that one glaring issue, it’s definitely one I’ll go back to every now and then.

Suspended is another one I played through the Lost Treasures compilation. I actually do remember seeing the alternate box version with the neat cryo “mask” in stores, but once again was never one I bothered with.

Just as well since I doubt I would have gotten into the actual game that much as a younger child.

Now entire concept itself of being a meat popsicle that acts as a sort of integrated brain for a greater computer system that runs vital aspects of a planet is pretty intriguing. Add in the whole fact that the system is severely damaged due to disasters and you have to fix it before more people die is also a good plot motivator. In fact it reminds me a bit of another game called Seedship except more complex in terms of the challenges you have to accomplish to make sure more people don’t die.

Which brings me to the actual gameplay, which is, well another review said it best that it’s more like a simulation than anything else. Controlling various damaged robots to fix various things before they send someone from above to shut you down believing you’ve gone mad and are the one trying to destroy the world rather than save it.

I think that’s one of the plot holes of the game, of why if they could send in techs, why don’t they just do that to fix things themselves. I know there’s some stuff in the feelies that implies the government is just very inefficient to think that far ahead, but I think it could have been handled a bit better.

For example I could see some of the puzzles including trying to help the actual human techs that get down there to reach places that even you wouldn’t normally be able to (Or even fix the multi-purpose bot!) and if you did something wrong, the human techs die during the ongoing disasters eventually all leading up to all life on the surface being wiped out or destroyed to such a degree that nobody is coming down to do anything for a very long time leaving you to linger in cryo until the systems completely fail resulting in your death.

In any case, wasn’t exactly my thing, but like I said it was a good idea. Endings on how efficiently you saved lives I suppose adds replay value for some into more technical games like this.

However, I enjoyed the addition of “impossible mode” where the game just has the planet’s sun explode killing everyone anyway. (I mean impossible doesn’t mean “very hard” it means can’t be done!)

This is one of those Infocom games I didn’t play until the Lost Treasures collection came out for the iPad. I remember it sort of catching my eye a couple times with the box, but just never pulled the trigger on it.

I sort of already knew the infamous ending to this one that made more than a few folk rage about, but that’s never stopped me from watching or playing something before. As they say, it’s about the journey.

So the journey then, well it reminded me of those simpler text adventures like Revenge of the Moon Goddess or Perils of Darkest Africa, with the exception of the writing and parser being better in every way. Plus in this one there’s absolutely no other NPCs to interact with (Even Perils had pygmies). Just you struggling against survival (water and food needed) and ancient traps.

I know a lot has been made of how you’re actually playing a villain protagonist in this one, but you don’t really get that impression necessarily from the game itself. It’s more in the feelies that came with the game (Or digitized versions of the feelies in the case of the Lost Treasures collection) so the “morality tale” that the game tries to convey at the end doesn’t really quite work like it should.

Once again, I think this is a game that could have benefited from having more interactions with NPCs. If the game started off with you having to screw people over, be a bad boss, etc in order to achieve your goals, then had a shorter last stretch after everyone has abandoned you and you have to enter the pyramid alone, I think from a story point of view this would have worked a lot better. Would have been a lot more fun too, to actually BE the bad guy as opposed to just getting told you were in passing.

The game itself is still solid in every other way though.

This was the last Infocom game I bought by itself in stores. Or rather I ordered it with a bunch of other games from a catalog that sold mostly C64 and Amiga games during the waning years of the company. A lot of good low prices and at that time I was just trying to buy as many C64 and Amiga 500 games I could since I certainly couldn’t find the stuff in actual stores anymore.

Yep, it was increasingly looking like I’d have to finally buy a PC with this Windows 95 that everyone seemed to be talking about. (Civ 2 pretty much was the main motivator)

But getting back to the game, I got this one thinking that with a name like Cutthroats surely it would entertain. I suppose I should have learned my lesson with Moonmist.

As usual the feelies were cool and necessary for parts of the game. And that’s about one of the few good things I can say about it. Much like Moonmist, they experimented with the concept of different endings which gives some replay value, but much like Moonmist, I wasn’t particularly enticed to play it again.

A “living world” that the game tries to create with NPCs going about their business rather than standing around for you was a good idea in theory, though the problem is because you’ve only got limited time to do what you have to do, you can miss a lot of things if you aren’t where you need to be. Worse though is everything involving the actual finding of the shipwreck, diving and such was just sort of dull in general.

I feel like with a name like Cutthroats there should have been more emphasis on dealing with the NPCs. Like having a puzzle to deal with each of them at specific times that they’re going to betray you. (And of course they’re also all trying to backstab each other for sunken treasure as well so it isn’t a case that they all just mob you instantly)

Perhaps more of psychological approach to this game would have worked better. I can just imagine having to take an entire crew (Not just avoiding taking the traitors because they ALL will be traitors, yet you need everyone’s skill at some point or else you can’t get the treasure). Scenarios could involve having to deal with someone just before you leave, during the dive, having to deal with one guy that went with you trying to off you with a spear gun, another trying to poison your food, perhaps manipulating another character so that they remain loyal to help you later at the end, etc.

Well just one aspect I think it would have been better anyway.

I remember my parents getting this one for me for Christmas and I’m fairly certain nobody in my elementary school had anything like it. Probably was the most “sexual” game I had before I later acquired Farmer’s Daughter a few years later.

Played on lewd mode obviously, but it’s not really excessively sexual even on lewd mode though. There’s a few places where your protagonist actually sexes up another character, but it’s not really pornographic in detail. It’s mostly going for humor right from the start.

For example, the way you choose your gender in the beginning is pretty funny and inventive as far as keeping the choice “in game” by picking which bathroom you need to use. More amusing is failing to even choose a bathroom within the short time you have to solidify which gender you are (and remaining “genderless”), results in you peeing yourself just as the aliens arrive and upon seeing this lack of self control they decide to just blow up the planet, ending the game.

The game also came with a scratch and sniff feelie which various numbers would come up in the game urging of when you should sniff the scents on the card provided. One way of being immersive I suppose.

After the initial beginnings of the game, using the bathroom, getting captured and getting your bearings. You’ll soon meet a NPC (Always the same sex as you) that also got captured. The NPC follows you around and sort of starts off the main mission by giving you a list of what items you need to gather to defeat the Leather Goddesses. It’s a running joke that this follower will always die in certain situations and you’ll travel alone for awhile, but the follower always comes back usually with a quip about how lucky they were to avoid whatever death at the last moment.

The majority of the game involves running around and teleporting to different locations in an interplanetary scavenger hunt. Mars is just one of the locations, Venus and even back to Earth are some others.

I generally hate mazes on principle, but there is a really annoying maze at one point which really wasn’t necessary. You need the feelies to get through it. Though it’s an Infocom game so using feelies to solve a puzzle is pretty par for course. There really could have been a less frustrating forum of copy protection though. A simple password where you have to say “Kweepa!” at a security door in the game (Found in one of the booklet feelies) would have sufficed just as well than a damn maze.

The writing and humor are what really make this game shine. While it’s definitely supposed to be a parody of old B-scifi movies, this game feels like a “B-version” of the Hitchhiker’s Guide game also by Infocom since it feels fairly similar to it with how the layout is (Scifi setting, emphasis on humor, random scavenger hunt for seemingly useless items, non-linear ways a of travel etc). I had more fun with this one though probably because it was a more “original” setting.

Not that the concept itself is unique, but as much as I liked Hitchhiker’s, it was based on a book and drew heavily from it. So you always felt like you were knew which jokes were already coming if you even has passing knowledge of the book. Leather Goddess was a more original creation. Not to mention the puzzles in this one are at least somewhat more reasonable. There’s isn’t anything nearly as ridiculous as the babble fish puzzle here and even the tougher puzzles don’t come that early in the game.

Certain bits of this one stuck with me more too, even the minor stuff from saying “Kweepa!” to your follower answering a riddle with complete confidence “That’s easy! A grapefruit!” which lead to their death (And then them showing up later of course).

Definitely one I kept coming back to.